Fri, 21 Oct 2016 18:55:00

Going green feels good. It spares the planet tons of CO2, NOx and SOx. It jumps the curve - we all know fossil fuels will become scarcer and scarcer. Renewable energies will and must be our future. But going green also enhances the bottom line.

Worthy wants to thank 350 Deschutes for recognizing us as a "Climate Champion." We strive to do our part to leave the world a little better than we found it.

Here are a few things we’ve done in the service of limiting our carbon footprint:

• Solar powered beer.  We have a 50KW solar electrical system with a total of 165 PV panels, the largest in Central Oregon.
• Solar powered hot water. We have 56 solar thermal panels that pre-heat the water for our brewing and restaurant.
• High  energy efficient conventional boilers and chillers.
• Waste water pretreatment, sparing our public water treatment plant tons of BOD and TSS annually.
• We grow many of our own herbs, a few of our hops, and supply our bio-rich spent grain to a local rancher who feeds the cattle, many of whom return to our restaurant in the form of Prefunk Burgers.

All total, because of our investment in Renewable Green Tech, Worthy spares the lungs of our precious planet 100,000 tons of CO2 annually, which is the equivalent of planting 8 acres of trees. Eight acres!  By generating much of our own power, we don’t buy as much electricity from our power company who gets 60% of their energy from coal burning power plants.

Financially, all rolled up over the years our solar system cost around $300,000. With rebates, incentives and federal credits and tax depreciation, that sticker price has been reduced to around $100,000. That’s a 66% reduction. Huge.

We plan on annual energy savings of over $10,000 annually (a number that will rise with inflation over the years).  At that rate we will pay for the system in 9 years and in the next 25 years we anticipate a net return on our solar investment of $434,000.

So green is not only good, it’s great!

Please click here to learn more about how Going Green is Good for the planet, Great for the bottom line.

Cheers!

RG Worthy
10/21/16